Saturday Stuff

Everyone loves a PARADE..and I especially do when one of my loved one's is in it. Saturday morning we spent the morning at "Frontier's Day" in Edgerton watching the parade that Rodney and Carley were participating in. Rodney had the honor of being one of the three Grand Marshall's. Their parade theme was "Unsung Hero's" which was very fitting I thought-He actually served with Lt. Barrett in the 714th. Pete was one of the amazing people that were there that horrible day of the mortar attack. He in fact according to Rodney keep the chaos at a minimum and made sure everything and everyone got taken care of-Thanks Pete! Pete has been fighting his own battle with cancer and is cancer free and looking so well. His wife Christy is another amazing person who made the deployment and the time after Rodney was wounded bearable. It was so good to see them-we need to get together more often! SSG Adair and Rodney are from the same home unit. He served in Iraq in an earlier deployment.
All the them were well deserving of the honor!

Carley was also in the parade with the band in her first appearance as part of the color guard-She looked so cute! I was a proud Mama. The color guard team worked really hard over the last week to prepare for the parade-with over half of the team being new members.

The rest of Saturday was busy with visiting with friends at Frontier's Day and attending Connor's first 3 on 3 Summer Soccer game. He was rocking the field-and made 4 of the 8 goals for his team! It was a fun game. He then went with his friend Dakota to watch him race-not sure what kind of car-He is 11 also! I do know Dakota did very well and won one of the races. Connor had a blast and got to work as part of the crew :)
I spent the evening at home with Beau and Blaze-finishing my third book for the week, watching "Army Wives" and staying cool in the AC. Rodney had to work 2nd shift last night, Taylor worked a pool party until 10pm and Carley was still at her Dad's.(she comes home tommorow after work) She had a great time in Philly on her mission trip-she is a BUSY gal-she leaves on the 30th for camp where she will be a staff member. Lots going on..
Keep Imagining!
Tracy
PS we are still waiting on Rodney's extensive medical records and the VA results from his 3 days of physicals and such, so we still don't know his VA rating or if he will be medically retired. Praying we will know something soon-he has been off medhold for almost 3 months. I know it is a government process-so I don't know why I would expect anything other.

Doctor Appointments

Update: tonight we found out there has been a snafu made and the paperwork for us to have health care coverage for 90 days after active duty hasn't happened. Imagine that?? Not sure if I am going to my dr. appt. tomorrow and if the appt. I had last week and my lab work is now going to cost us a fortune. Praying all will be straightened out with a couple simple phone calls in early am.UGGGH
Rodney had an important dr. appt. today. He needed to have the dr. fill out a form with questions about his abilities and if he could handle the physical issues of being deployed in a war zone. I just spoke with Rod and he said the dr. put no for most of the answers. He also raised the dosage on Rodney's blood pressure medicine since it is running even higher now. We now send this information from the dr. to those making deployment decisions and such. I won't say what I think will or should happen because I don't think the same way as the powers that be. Just another step In the process after medhold. there is a meeting scheduled next week with a American Legion Rep who will give us better insight into what the VA will rate Rodney's disability at and help with filing some paperwork. Just so many balls to keep in the air to make sure we are contacting the correct departments, individuals and filling out the correct paperwork.
Dr. appts seem to be a theme for this week..I have a dr. appt. tommorow and some really unpleasant tests on Friday (colonoscopy and endoscopy)...but then I have a massage appt. on Saturday (that is a big plus!) Thanks for checking in!
Keep Imagining!
Tracy

Back from a Spring Break

Hi to all my faithful readers-
I am back after a 10 day trip with my mom and Carley to Texas. We had a nice time and really enjoyed the warmer weather. Carley and her High School Band competed in a Music Festival in Dallas-we enjoyed hearing them perform-they did Awesome!!! The band came home with over 10 trophies. We experienced Dallas (JFK Memorial, Dealy Plaza, Speed Zone, the Galleria and getting lost even with a navigation system). We headed down to Galveston Island for a few days as the the rest of the band headed back home. We did have a flat tire on the way to Galveston-but we were helped out by a young lady who had it changed in less than 30 minutes and wouldn't even accept any money for saving us-just wanted us to pay it forward at some point. We were so impresssed with the kindness of so many during our trip-thank you Nadia! We stayed in condo owned by Wounded Warriors right across from the Seawall.So grateful to that amazing organization. We saved so much $ by not having to pay for lodging. They offer this to wounded warriors and their families. A big Thanks to Col. John Folsom and his staff! Our Balcony looked out onto the Gulf-very cool! We ate seafood, dug for seashells, shopped on the Strand, went on a boat ride, had a couple picnics at the beach,saw dead jellyfish-yuck, went out on a fishing pier, got caught in the rain walking a mile away from our condo,spent some quality time relaxing and hanging out. We headed home with a much fuller vehicle from all our shopping and many memories we will always have with each other. It was a lot of driving and many tanks of gas but so worth it. Now I am trying to catch up and deal with the upcoming issues-Rodney is done with Medhold in 2 days!!!! Still not sure what we are supposed to be doing or what happens next. So I am trying to breath and slowly come out of the "Vacation" mode. I hope everyone had a Happy Easter! I will post pics and more about our Texas trip later.
Keep Imagining!
Tracy